In those optical disk drives employing magnetooptic (MO) media, data integrity is limited due to possible deterioration of the MO media during its life. That is, there are a large number of media errors at the beginning of life or MO media. Additional media errors may occur (grow) during lifetime of such disk. Even though MO media for data storage is a relatively recent vintage, and there is a lack of media error statistics for such media, it is apt that error rates at the beginning of life and end of life improves as more and more of such media is employed. For ensuring adequate data integrity and reliability, verify on write commands are needed. When media reliability improves, such verify on write may be dispensed with. It is desired to provide automatic means for invoking or disabling the verify on write. The verify on write is a read operation immediately following a write operation requiring one additional rotation of the MO disk. It is desired, if possible, to eliminate this time delay in verifying that data has been successfully recorded on peripheral medium.
A second problem occurring in optical disk using MO media is related to lifetime of a laser. A laser generates a beam which not only records data on the MO media but also enables reading of such data. Again, the use of solid state lasers such as gallium-arsenide lasers is relatively new and laser life statistics in the optical disk environment are not plentiful. Leaving the laser on tends to decrease the effective life of the laser. It is desired to provide for laser turnoff for maintaining a maximal life of a laser. Automatic selection of the above two described reliability enhancing operations is desired.